2899. Robert Southey to William Wilberforce, 15 January 1817

I beg pardon for having forgotten your enquiry respecting my friend
Kosters address. It is simply Pernambuco, –
but the Brazil packet goes to the Rio; & there is no communication with
Pernambuco except by merchant ships. The best plan therefore will be to consign your
packet to the care of his father John Theodore Koster,
Liverpool. [1]

This part of the country scarcely feels the existing distress, –
Westmoreland (being wholly an agricultural country) not at all. The only
xxx We have some cotton mills here, poisoning the health & morals of the
people, – & some coarse weaving which is not so mischievous, because only men are
employed in it. These suffer something, but not much; – a collection was made several
weeks ago; – the amount must have been very trifling, – but nothing more has been
called for, & no complaints are heard. Our population is in a deplorable state
both as to law & gospel; – the magistrates careless to the last degree & the
Vicar who is one of them, has the comprehensive sin of omission to answer for. [2] The next generation
I trust will see fewer of these marrying & christening machines. The morals of
the people here have dreadfully worsened during his long slumbers; – even within my
remembrance there has been a great change.

Mr Harry Inglis has been kind
enough to send me poor Bowdlers Remains [3] – Why should I affix that epithet to his name when they who are
gone to their rest are to be envied & not commiserated!

I sincerely hope some measures will be taken for checking the
incendiary journals, as soon as Parliament meets. If they are suffered to proceed
with impunity a Bellum Servile [4] must be the result. The one measure which appears to me indispensible
is that transportation be made the punishment for seditious lit writings:
fine & imprisonment are absurdly inade inappropriate

[1] Southey had interested
Wilberforce in Koster’s proposal to translate into Portuguese, and thereby aid the
abolition of slavery campaign in Brazil, Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the
African Slave–Trade by the British Parliament (1808). BACK

[2] Isaac Denton (c. 1758–1820), Vicar of
Crosthwaite, Keswick, 1786–1820 and a local magistrate. BACK

[3] John Bowdler (1783–1815; DNB), Select Pieces in Verse
and Prose (1816), no. 330 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s
library. BACK